SEOUL-South Ko­re­an po­lice say they have ar­rest­ed two men who al­leged­ly stole the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of about 8 mil­lion cell­phone cus­tomers in one of the coun­try's biggest hack­ing schemes. Po­lice said in a state­ment yes­ter­day that the two men de­vel­oped a hack­ing pro­gramme and stole the names, res­i­den­tial reg­is­tra­tion num­bers and phone con­tract de­tails of cus­tomers of mo­bile car­ri­er KT Corp.

Po­lice said the two made about US$877,000 by sell­ing the in­for­ma­tion to tele­mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies which sub­se­quent­ly used the de­tails to con­tact cus­tomers to so­lic­it them to switch to oth­er mo­bile op­er­a­tors. They said sev­en oth­er peo­ple who al­leged­ly bought and dis­trib­uted the hack­ing pro­gramme and the stolen per­son­al da­ta have al­so been booked with­out phys­i­cal de­ten­tion.

AP